Andrew Bartlett has been active in politics for over 20 years, including as a Queensland Senator from 1997-2008. This blog started in 2004 and reflects his own views, independent of any political party or organisation.

I rarely pay much attention to most of what is said and done in the House of Representatives, but like many I have been following their debates on the RU486 issue. The Second Reading of the legislation has just passed by 95 votes to 50, which is quite a sizeable margin. There will be some support for the amendments moved by Bowman MP, Andrew Laming, and ...

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Since the Senate’s decisive vote to pass the RU486 Bill last Thursday, I’ve had a few people ask me in a hopeful tone whether this means we can see more cooperation across parties and a chance for a bit more democracy to grow through the cracks in the concrete cloak of control the Prime Minister has put over parliamentary politics.
My short answer is (a) the Bill still has ...

After the 2nd Reading of the Bill passed by 45 votes to 26, there were 2 sets of amendments put in the Committee stage of the debate - 1 on behalf of Senators Barnett & Humphries, (lost 28 votes to 44) and the other on behalf of Senators Colbeck & Scullion (lost 33 votes to 41).
The concluding 3rd Reading vote was called at 4.45pm. The result was announced ...

UPDATE #4:
The Second Reading of the Bill occurred just before 1pm. There were 46 votes in favour and 25 votes against, with 5 Senators not present. There are two different sets of amendments which will be voted on around 4.15, and the final Third Reading vote at 4.45. I believe some of those who voted for the 2nd Reading will not vote for the 3rd ...

Although there are other Bills being debated in the Senate this week – most notably amendments to the Defence Act to extend the power of the Government to call out our military within Australia in the event of an emergency - the main political and legislative focus is the debate on the drug widely known as RU486.

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Mini Posts

I’ve had a break from writing for a variety of reasons, but the reckless approach the new Queensland government is taking to their spending decisions – and the straightout nonsensicality of some of their claims – roused me enough to pen a piece for New Matilda. Time will tell whether the Newman government will start trying to ensure their statements have some connection with reality – I suggest the way they respond next year to the findings of the inquiry into child safety which they’ve established will be a significant test.

Back in October, I wrote here about the decline or re-defining of blogs, at least in the Australian political arena. The relatively few posts I’ve done on this blog since then shows how much less useful I find it to do my own blog than I used to, and as I mentioned back then, a big reason why I don’t read many of the blogs I used to is because the valuable links to many interesting stories, ideas and pieces of information can be found more easily through Twitter or Facebook, sometimes with comment threads which are also at least as good.

Fundamentally, I don’t greatly care about the outcome of Labor’s leadership travails. As my previous post indicates, the bigger issue is that the ALP is being fundamentally damaged by the toxicity of this brawl, and the fact that the brawl is happening in this way is a sign of some much greater problems within Labor. Whatever the immediate outcome, I think those problems are likely to continue. The outcome of the leadership contest (including the size of what will surely be a Gillard victory) will shape how those problems play out, but they will still be there.

Not surprisingly, I see this as presenting an opportunity for the Greens to build some support, but more importantly it presets extra responsibility and obligation for the Greens to be a stronger counter to what is a seriously reactionary Coalition.

But seeing we’re all pundits now, and despite having little inside knowledge, my prediction is that there will be no ‘third candidate’ in tomorrow’s leadership ballot. Julia Gillard will win comfortably. The instability will not disappear. It’s quite possible there will be another leadership ballot before the election but Kevin Rudd will not become leader then either. No matter how good Kevin Rudd looks in the polls, that polling lead would disappear very quickly if he was back in the PM’s job.

I’ve mentioned before my liking for the 80s Brisbane band Ups and Downs. I got a chance to interview their lead singer Greg Atkinson on 4ZzZ FM a few weeks ago. They’ve released a compilation CD of 20 of their best tunes and played a gig in Brisbane earlier this month to promote and celebrate it.

It was a fairly long interview, but I found it very interesting to hear the views of someone who has been active in the independent sphere of the music industry for so long about what has changed and what is the same.